paintings or in sculptured form. The final element in
the iconographical program is a half-circular lunette
over the entrance, often portraying MAITREYA, the
buddha of the future, sometimes with twin niches be-
neath for smaller stucco or clay sculptures. The largest
caves at Kizil, with a colossal central image, had up to
five successive balconies with sculptures instead of
paintings on the lateral walls.
Sites along the southern route include Niya, Miran,
Endere, and Loulan; those along the north include
Karashahr, Gaochang, Bezeklik, and Toyuq. The two
routes rejoined near the Chinese border west of Dun-
huang, where at least one of the fifth-century North-
ern Wei caves (cave 257) displays a narrative depicted
with iconography and style similar to the same narra-
tive at Kizil (cave 224), the only major difference be-
ing the placing of the story on the crown of the vault
in Kizil, and at waist level on the side walls in Dun-
huang. On this occasion at least, the same craftsmen
must have worked at both sites, changing the place-
ment to suit the local architectural schema.
At the Chinese end of the Silk Road, the huge nat-
ural cave (no. 169) at Binglingsi, on the Yellow River
near Lanzhou, bears a date of 420 C.E. The larger than
life-size clay sculptures modeled on wooden armatures
are closely related in style to contemporary stone sculp-
tures at Mathura, showing how rapid was the trans-
mission of both iconography and style, with the
necessary adaptation to local materials.
See also:Bamiyan; Central Asia; China; China, Bud-
dhist Art in; Monastic Architecture
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geles: Getty Conservation Trust, 2000.RODERICKWHITFIELDCEYLON. SeeSri LankaCHAN ARTFrom the point of view of art history, the CHAN
SCHOOL(Japanese, Zen; Korean, So ̆n), more than any
other form of Buddhism, has long been associated with
distinctive modes of visual representation. Looking at
Japan, for instance, such disparate forms as architec-
ture, ceramics, tea ceremony, gardens, sculpture, and
painting have been viewed as elements of a broad and
unified Zen aesthetic that cuts across traditional
boundaries. Since there is no category or concept of
“Chan art” in surviving texts from the Tang (618–907)
or Song (960–1279) dynasties, however, when the
Chan school achieved its peak popularity, the histori-
cal origins of this aesthetic in China remain murky, at
best. Indeed, in light of this lack of sources, scholars
have had to develop their own criteria and definitions.
A closer look at how these conceptions have evolved,
particularly with regard to painting, may help illumi-
nate the larger question (and problem) of how to de-
fine Chan art.
Western interest in art forms connected with Chan
Buddhism was a natural outgrowth of the broader in-
terest in Chan and Zen that began in the early 1900s
and blossomed over the course of the century. One of
the first scholars to identify Chan art (especially Chan
painting) as a specific subcategory of Buddhist art was
the eminent British Asianist Arthur Waley, whose In-
troduction to the Study of Chinese Painting(1923) con-
tained a chapter titled “Zen Buddhism and Its RelationCHANART